Mega Man Zero: Shadows of a Hunter
by Erico
Summary: A shorter Novelette: A lost relic from the century of Mavericks, once scorned as the Demon, shall rise from his grave and be charged with his most difficult quest of all...Finding himself.
1. Prologue: Strains of Elysium

_**MEGA MAN ZERO: SHADOWS OF A HUNTER**_

A Novelette by Eric "Erico" Lawson

**Prologue: Strains of Elysium**

_August 9__th__, 2164 _

_The Last Skull Fortress_

Life was a cruel thing. That much the Crimson Hunter could discern as he lay in the ruins of Sigma's last great stand...it was cruel, and he'd finally gotten his penalty for all those years of cheating the system.  
Warriors like him...didn't live forever. Weren't supposed to. And his body, torn in half and slowly dying, was a reminder of that.

_At least...it's over this time._  
No, this wasn't like all the other times Sigma had gone off on some grand plan to destroy the world as they knew it. He'd thrown in his last desperate bid, and it had failed. Using Dynamo, a mercenary who Sigma had gained in his employ, the persistent and undeniably deranged Maverick had infected the orbiting Space Colony Eurasia...and sent it on a degrading orbit that would have made it hit the earth in only 16 hours.  
_Aah, Cain...you would've been proud of us._

It got confusing...his mind was beginning to flake out, play tricks on him. But Cain would have been proud of them. Just as Sigma had put in motion Eurasia, he'd also played his hand against the Hunters in New York city...And in the scaffolding surrounding the Statue of Liberty, the Maverick, ever resourceful and with only increased potency over his surroundings from years of being fused inexorably with the Maverick Virus, had appeared as a giant head. Zero had his arm knocked off from the first showdown, but X had arrived in his reconstructed Force Armor and ended it.  
But Sigma had wanted to be destroyed. In the explosion that followed, he spread himself all over the world...as tiny particles of what he was, simplified motes of his Viral essence that went worldwide. It had been a trap, and it had been planned. Sigma wanted chaos, and as the world went mad by the Sigma Virus's presence, the Hunters had a twofold threat.  
_Less than a day...to save this world and to stop Eurasia...But we did it._  
X and Zero had never before worked at such a pace, and they'd met up with plenty of old foes and embittered friends alike as they worked to make their plans work. Signas, the resourceful bastard he was, had put Douglas in charge of fixing up the Enigma Cannon, a rustic piece of equipment that had been installed outside of the MHHQ following the Doppler Rebellion...the Third Maverick Uprising. But it was years old, and the years, with budget cuts and no true threat against the HQ itself, had been hard on it. Only with parts had Douglas been able to reinforce the cannon enough to fire again...and that hadn't stopped it.  
_In our last moments...Sigma sought to remind us of all the pain and suffering our battles caused on this planet. Bastard..._  
As Zero struggled with Dynamo to defend the HQ, X in his newly acquired Falcon Armor had struck off to regain the parts from more places, in their last ditch plan. To fire off an old space shuttle from the HQ's former Repliforce Air wing trades...and with a kamikaze attack, shatter Eurasia and prevent the Apocalypse.  
It had worked. Eurasia's main brunt had been averted...and while it had crashed, the effects were nowhere near as terrible as they could have been. Zero had piloted the shuttle that had taken it down...  
Even then, he cheated death.  
His only remaining arm twitched for a moment, reached down below his chest and felt the sparking wires and pooled blood where his lower body had once been.  
_I won't be cheating it again..._

The Virus Sigma had sent into the station...and the Sigma Virus on Earth...had combined somehow in Southeast Asia, at coordinates unknown and forgotten by time. But its new form did not take the shape of Sigma's monstrous head...but Zero himself. Alia had called it the Zero Virus at first...but X and Zero, pushing on through the ancient, but somehow still dangerous Fortress, found suspicions. It was uncomfortable...and for Zero, it brought up too many fuzzy memories. Things about his past in spaces long blank...and best left blank.  
The Fortress was not Sigma's. It lacked his design, his style...but he'd used it all the same. And as they fought through, as Zero dealt with the reincarnation of Rangda Bangda and X struggled against an amorphous Demon with a stone dead eye and no true shape...A Shadow Devil, X referred to it shakily...  
Their doubts, their worry about each other and their paranoia if the other might be infected only grew.

In the Third "Ring" of the facility, as Zero had somehow been inspired to call it, X and Zero had met up again...in a room with an emblem, once fuzzy...but now all too clear, shining in neon purple above them.  
A Jagged W...A symbol of an age past, and an age best left forgotten. At last, it became clear to Zero. That he...and this place...were tied. Tied in some way, a deep and distant way. And that the W that shone in the room was also tied to him.  
As were its implications.  
Child of the Devil.

Zero, stunned but still unwilling to be led into despondency, forced himself to think only of ending Sigma's life...and putting the Maverick's last grand effort to a stop.  
X, always concerned for his friend...had asked him to go back. Return to the MHHQ. Report in for testing. He could handle it himself.  
But Zero...no, this was Zero's mission. Not X's.  
And they fought. Over the stupidest of things...who would destroy Sigma...X and Zero, the oldest of friends fought. Zero had triumphed, barely...only because for a moment, he had listened to a darker impulse from within and overwhelmed X. And with X lying unconscious...recovering, but alive and safe...  
Zero had pushed on, to fight Sigma.  
He was weakened. His efforts had drained him. And somehow, Zero knew...that this was it. That this was the LAST TIME. And never again.  
Sigma. The Virus had deluded him so much through the years...but the one thing that the Maverick had always been insistent about...was that Zero had always denied his true heritage, his true mission. That it should have been Zero standing at Sigma's side as a Maverick, and not against him.  
And Sigma had found this place...As he said, "Found an old man..."  
Zero wasn't a student of history, but he knew enough. Knew enough to realize, from the blatant symbols, he at last understood what the Maverick meant.  
The Child of Wily. The last child of Wily.  
And Zero had passed on the mantle of Destroyer to Sigma.  
_But...I made my own destiny. And I fought you, Sigma...And as for Wily...Damn him to Hell. Damn him for ever making me...but damn him for thinking I would ever...no._

Footsteps approached. Zero was shutting down...for the last time, likely...but he knew that voice.  
"...Zero?! Oh God, NO! Zero, don't die!" The footsteps stopped, and strong hands drew his mangled torso up into the embrace of a familiar pair of arms.  
"...X..." Zero tried to speak, coughing up a clot of blood that had gotten caught in his windpipe. "Damnit...I didn't want you to see me like this."  
The Crimson Hunter opened his eyes...found X looking down at him, misty-eyed and only moments away from crying his heart out. "Conserve your energy..." X pleaded. "We'll get you back to the HQ, we'll fix you up..."  
"He got me good, X." Zero wheezed, managing a weak smile. "I...took him down, but...He got me good."  
"Stop talking like that." X choked out, shaking his head. "You're not dying on me...I won't let you die on me! I need you!!"

But whatever sorrowful tones the two could have shared were interrupted. X turned about and looked towards a sudden sound, the shifting, groaning presence of metal. And Zero...seeing only the look on X's face, watched as the sadness turned into disbelief and then horror. "Oh...NO..."  
He heard a familiar cackle, wheezing and in pain. "...D...Gu...DROP...DEAD..."  
And he heard the sound of a blistering and focused beam of piercing plasma laser...and felt it blast through his back and out his front. He saw it pierce through the center of X's chest as well...And whatever damage it did to his friend, it was death for him. No chance of survival.  
His Microfusion Tank, the source of his body's power, what kept him alive, had been vaporized before it even had a chance to explode from the destabilization.  
X's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he collapsed backwards onto the floor, the beam's effect cutting clean through his torso and severing away the legs of the greatest Hunter that ever was.  
Beside him, the shattered body of Zero collapsed back onto the ground...Jaw clenched in horrific pain as his mind blared out every warning imaginable. No power. No time. No chance.  
No hope.

But all the same, with what little dwindling power coursed through him, the Crimson Hunter shakily lifted his head up...formed his only arm into a Buster and aimed at the chuckling mass of wires and the deformed head that had grown from them.  
"...Persistent...you are...Sigma..." Zero wheezed, managing a sick grin as his Buster drained even more of his remaining strength away from him. It wasn't much. It was enough. Enough for one shot.  
"Die...Sigma..."  
The plasma blast blew apart the final incarnation of Sigma.

And the ruins grew quiet for a moment.  
Zero's head fell back weakly onto the ground. He didn't even have the energy to transform his hand back, and left his Buster resting against his chest. Eyes blurred, vision and senses failing, Zero felt a certain darkness and weakened state of mind overwhelm him. "X...Do...You hear me?"  
But X did not respond.  
Zero closed his eyes, lacking even the power to cry. "Your optimism...led to your own demise...But not like this."  
Weakly, his chest rose and fell, instinctively trying to draw fresh hydrogen into a Microfusion generator long since gone. "But...you should live..."  
His senses died. The world faded into darkness. And the memories came.  
_Is this...what it's like to die...to have your memories flash before...your eyes?_

He remembered everything. Sigma. The Maverick Uprisings.  
Cain. Hazil.  
X.  
...Wily.  
_Fuck you dad...fuck you to Hell. Even as I die...I refuse to be what you wanted me to._  
He remembered Iris...  
Her smile.  
Her laugh.  
And how he had killed her.  
_Iris...please...forgive me..._  
In an endless loop, Zero found through the cascade failure of his dying brain nothing but sorrow. Nothing but regret.  
Found that in the end...His presence in this world had wrought nothing but shame and grief.  
The guilt was too strong. For who he was. What he had done.  
The innocents that had died...All along the way. Just to defeat Sigma.  
But never again.  
Another memory...old, corrupted...but as he died, at last accessible...  
_It's...it's me. But it isn't me...It's the destroyer of reploids._

Nothing to show for his life but bloodstained hands, a murderous visage.  
Nothing to carry on into the next world to change his nature.  
Nothing to defend himself with.  
He had fought Sigma and the Mavericks.  
But it was through him they had been created.

And then, Zero made a decision.

He wanted to die.  
_It's...it's for the best, X..._  
_I have to die to restore the peace...If I live, only more pain, more suffering will come._  
He knew somewhere he was right. And he was tired.  
_The end...At last, the end. To it all._  
Never again. No more sorrow. No more guilt. No reconciliation or salvation.  
Just death.  
Just the quiet and absolving...smothering...onset of death.  
Around him, the ruined final Fortress of Wily shook and crumbled apart...buried the corpses of X and Zero, then bearing them forth in the dying explosions.  
Peace would come now. Sigma...and the Mavericks...and the Maverick Virus...  
Would never threaten Earth again.  
X would live. Resurrected by a miracle, and carrying on Zero's saber and his legacy.  
But Zero himself was lost to the past.  
As it should be.

But...  
Not as it would be forever.

* * *

_April 8__th__, 2220_

_Neo Arcadia_

_5:47 P.M._

The Tree of Eden was as glorious as ever...Its dense Treeborg foliage stretched up to the top of the mountainous glass topped room, in the deepest heart of Neo Arcadia's inner sanctum. Then again, the Tree was always glorious, Copy X thought calmly. It had a wonderful power source.  
Locked into an open coffin, long since dead, but his ancient body still beating out life from the archaic Microfusion Tank that powered him, Mega Man X's corpse hung his head to the ground, the red crystal control chip cover on his helmet flashing a powerful beacon of light every few seconds in synchronization with the cycle of the tree. Copy came here more times than he cared to admit...and every time he did, he found himself mesmerized by the shape, the majesty even the body of his predecessor commanded.  
And then he tried hard to ignore the flashing black spherical prison above X's head...The reason for X's sacrifice.  
"A century of fighting." Copy began calmly, looking at the body. "And then you decided to end the War with the easy way out."  
True, the Elf would have been difficult to destroy...But Copy spat on the floor, his cold red eyes acknowledging that it was more likely the foolish warrior had simply lost the fighting spirit. The four Generals of Neo Arcadia had taken the news the hardest, along with that human scientist...Ciel, as he recalled.  
X had always been there to lead them. The Four Generals in particular had pledged to defend the once Maverick Hunter with their very lives, and as if to spite them all, X had ended the Cyber Elf Wars by using his very body to contain the Dark Elf and seal the last of the opposing forces away. But Neo Arcadia...the haven of humanity, the last standing city that could be called Utopia in the wartorn world, could not function without Mega Man X. Its founder. Its savior. Its leader.  
And so out of that need, he...Copy...had been born. He was a clone of X.  
...No. More than just a simple clone.  
He was better than Mega Man X.

A sudden displacement of air from behind him made the leader of Neo Arcadia tense up for a moment, rising on his hackles before shaking his head. "Phantom, there's no need for you to always make such a dramatic entrance."  
Behind him, the gray and black ninja reploid Phantom bowed to one knee in reverence to his leader. "My apologies. But you are needed at Central."  
Coldly, Copy turned about from the slumbering corpse of Mega Man X, his spark of life forever extinguished, to look at his charge. "What is it this time? Has the Resistance thrown together another pitiful assault force? Surely the Drones can see to it."  
Behind his mask, Phantom's eyes narrowed. "Our recon teams have reported a scouting party from the Resistance is on the move into the swamps on the outskirts of old Hong Kong...And she's with them."  
Copy frowned. "Ciel?" Phantom nodded. Copy pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. "Illogical...Ciel's role in their affairs is best served hiding away in whatever section of the nearby ruins outside of Neo Arcadia, not off wandering."  
"That is precisely why I have been sent to bring you back." Phantom explained, nonplussed and droll as ever. "Harpuia would like your input before he acts."  
Copy nodded. "Very well...I see he still carries some tones of sympathy for the misguided scientist. You may return back to Central. I'll be along shortly." Phantom bowed in reply, then vanished in a beam of warplight.  
Copy X mulled over the thought in his head a few times, then turned to look back at the body of his predecessor. "Well, X...it seems at long last, what you could never finish, I shall at last accomplish. When we have captured Ciel and brought her back to Neo Arcadia and away from her misguided actions, the Resistance will crumble."  
X was silent, of course. Copy scowled at that, wishing for a moment to blast away the somehow smug look of him. "You trusted Ciel more than you trusted anyone else, you naive creature. I was made by her hands to take your place...and then she turned on everything we have fought so hard to create and protect. Your legacy...your age...is long dead."  
Copy X took a menacing step towards the corpse. "The Mavericks...Sigma...The Virus...Maverick Hunter Headquarters...and the great Mega Man X. You're nothing but ghosts now...Nothing but shadows from a past long buried. And today, the spade shall turn over the last shovelful of dirt on the grave of the 22nd Century."  
Copy turned away from X's body, scowling. Today, his legacy, his true reign would begin. The Resistance would be crushed, and Ciel returned to protective custody for her misguided actons. What appealed to him most was how on this day...at long last, Neo Arcadia would have nothing left to fear. The last shadows of 21XX would fade away on this, a day he would ensure would always be remembered. The scowl transformed into a cold smile, and he vanished in a beam of warplight for Central...

There were commands to be issued to Harpuia.

To Copy, April 8th would be a day marked as the point when the Resistance was at last crushed, and his reign over Neo Arcadia...indeed, the world...would finally begin in earnest.  
But to others...

To a young woman, brilliant, desperate, and pegging everything on a legend almost forgotten...  
April 8th would mark the day when the walls of Neo Arcadia began to crumble...  
And the past, in the form of a red Hunter long asleep, would cast an ominous shadow in the new world.  
Somewhere in the swamp and ruins...  
The remains of the Crimson Hunter waited and slept.  
Waiting to be born anew.


	2. End of the Dreamless Sleep

_**MEGA MAN ZERO: SHADOWS OF A HUNTER**_

A Novelette by Eric "Erico" Lawson

**End of The Dreamless Sleep**

_April 9__th__, 2220_

_Southeast Asia_

_Lost Ruins_

There had been darkness. Calming, overwhelming darkness. It had been comforting to him, pushed away all his thoughts and memories. The pain, the guilt, and the weariness had once left him.  
And then came light. A part of him reacted violently to the intrusion; it shattered his silence, pushed away his darkness and left him screaming, clawing at the shining warmth.  
_No, not again...please, just let me die...let me sleep..._  
It ignored his pleas. A shrill cry pierced through the noise, ringing hard in his ears. What little consciousness he had been able to bring back to bear was torn apart...shredded in a blink as the light, once blinding, consumed him as fully as the darkness had.  
He had...known things once, he had. His past. His pain. His own demise.  
All was torn from him, and the darkness vanished.  
Still, a part of him whimpered, even as what he was, his memories and very spirit were crushed in front of him.  
_Not like this...It wasn't supposed to be like this..._

* * *

The darkness left him. A twitching, spasming sensation ran through his body, from head to toe, leaving him trembling for a moment.  
Inside of him, systems long deactivated began to power up. A hand came up and pressed against his chest...  
No hole was there. His power core was intact. He blinked a few times...But...No, it was too fuzzy.  
For just a moment, he saw a flickering image...of a man in red with long yellow hair, dying on the ground, nothing but a legless and one armed torso watching the world collapse around him.  
His eyes narrowed...no, that was wrong. He shook his head. Was...had...it been him?  
His head was pounding, trying desperately to forge connections to things and people he somehow knew...but could not remember.  
Feverishly, with increasing panic, his hand reached up and over his shoulder, trying to grasp at something. An instinct, really...one honed by training and experience he couldn't recollect.  
His hand closed over empty air.  
And that was when he finally paused long enough to acknowledge the presence of another person nearby. The shivering and trembling was what drew his eyes.  
It was the glow in her eyes, the way her hair cascaded behind her back, and the gentle, but terrified tone of her voice that kept him from wandering back into the recesses of his brain.  
"Zero..." She choked out, eyes streaked with tears. "Zero, help me. Please."  
_...Zero...Zero??_ He thought feverishly for a moment, unbelievingly. But somehow, a fraction of a second later, he knew it to be true. He couldn't remember it. He couldn't compare it. But somewhere, within the pit of his electric soul, it felt right.  
More movement caught his eye. He looked beyond the young woman who had begged for his help...only to see a marching row of blue robotic figures with single red eyes in their heads coming towards them.  
His eyes fell to the floor, covered in water that came up to his knees. He stared around...and found ruins. A dilapidated structure which had seen far better days.

Somehow, it was familiar to him...but familiarity had to wait.  
He caught his reflection in the water, stunned as he looked at himself.  
Zero.  
He seemed...different. But everything was different, and nothing, outside of his name felt right.  
The blue figures came closer, and the blond haired girl in pink clothing screamed in terror, running behind him. In response, they all lifted up their right arms, which transformed in milliseconds to wicked looking blasters.  
His eyes narrowed. He knew this, though. He knew what those were capable of firing...plasma. And he knew now what the woman was asking his help for. She needed protection. From them.

At last, his voice found him.  
It too...felt right.  
"Get down." He said quietly, stunned at the noise. The first words out of his mouth...and somehow, he had known what to tell her to do.  
The blue drones fired...a hail of plasma rounds, rapid fire, low intensity, came spiraling towards them as the woman dropped quickly onto her hands and knees, staring in horror at the approaching storm.  
Zero ran the calculations. They would all pass safely overhead. She was safe...for the moment. But the drones had to be dealt with.  
In another move of pure instinct, one that left him surprised, but pleasantly so, rockets blasted forth fire from his boots and he dashed in a belch of flames to the side, easily dodging the hail of plasma.  
His right arm came up...He blinked for a moment, once again seeing one image and having his fragmented mind telling him that it was different than how it used to be.  
For a moment, he felt as though once upon a time...he had had a gun on his arm like the blue drones. Now only a fist pointed at them, and he cursed. He looked around the room, eyes somehow knowing to scout for a weapon.  
In the hands of a fallen soldier in green fatigues and shattered goggles was a small, but menacing looking white pistol. He dashed away from another hail of firepower and rolled to the corpse, snatching away his first line of defense.  
There was no time for thinking. No time for talk.  
But plenty of time...for instinct.

He continued to dash across the waterlogged room, the hail of plasma chasing after him. At the last moment, he made a jump up onto the wall, and then backflipped off of it, somehow spinning in such an unusual way that his pistol lined up with the closest drone. He fired off a quick barrage of five shots.  
Every hit impacted with precision and deadly speed. And like them...he too, was firing plasma.  
It was different...yet somehow, all the same over again.  
Stunned, his mind left him. Instincts took over once again, and he dashed towards the remaining cluster that had wandered into the room. They fired at him, trying to block his attack.  
Instinct made him dodge and weave through the storm as easily as a speck of air might bob around raindrops. In the end, his blaster rang out fifteen more times.  
Three more blue drones fell dead, bleeding a reddish residue into the water.  
The woman got up from her position and walked over to him, slowly and tentatively.  
Zero breathed in and out. "...How..."  
"We have to get out of here." The woman insisted, still panicked. "They've got this place surrounded now...and they'll stop at nothing to take me."  
Zero didn't know much. He couldn't remember anything.  
Even his name had taken prompting.  
But there...there were instincts in place that defied this. A sense of automation that guided him.  
And an overwhelming sensation, in his heart and spirit...  
That this was a woman he had to protect with all his might.  
"We'll get out of here." Zero murmured, staring around the room for a moment, and then down at the blaster in his hand. "I promise we will."

* * *

"Drones" and "Pantheons" were two terms that Ciel used to describe the odd Cyclopean droids that seemed to come at them endlessly as Zero led her through the long abandoned and forgotten hallways of the ruins. He moved at a speed that still stunned him, but he was fast becoming used to it. He set his mind on autopilot and relied on instincts honed from some time he couldn't remember...and those marvelous instincts served him well.  
They may have been many, but they were slow...Not even the robotic sentry spiders they had brought with them proved a match for the fast and furious plasmafire that Zero was throwing out. The Buster Gun, as Ciel had told him it was called, hissed and spat off curls of smoke after the most recent barrage, and the last of the Drones collapsed to the floor, their singular red eyes flickering to a dull red lifelessness as the electric stunrods they had for permanent arms flashed their last current of electricity.  
A few disturbing thoughts rose up in his addled mind...severely addled, confused, and certain of only his name and his desire to protect the young woman behind him. The troopers, these "Pantheons" seemed eerily familiar to him. The shape of them...the blue hue of their armor, and how they held their arms to fire at him were all subliminal cues to a portion of who he was he could not recall.  
Fragmented, deformed, and corrupted...That was the portion of his brain dedicated to his long and aged memories. The subliminal processes that kept him running had run more than a few diagnostics since he'd woken up, and had flashed in the corner of his eye with queries of whether or not those corrupted files should be completely severed; they couldn't be erased, but the connections could be destroyed, thus minimizing any further corruption.  
For a reason he couldn't explain...maybe fear, a fear of losing who he was...he hadn't severed those connections. His memories, addled and incomplete, existed as they would.  
He took in a breath and peered around, gun tensed in his left arm. Nothing blue was moving.  
Except for Ciel's eyes. The young woman glanced around, her gaze shining brightly as she looked in every direction, stunned at how easily Zero had torn through the enemy forces. "Zero, you...you're incredible." She exhaled disbelievingly.  
Zero tucked the blaster behind his back, once again feeling the familiar sensation that a different sort of weapon belonged there...A tiny electrical current created enough of a magnetic force to latch it securely to him until he'd need it again, without damaging his delicate circuits and wires. Ciel ventured out in front of him, moving forward and meeting a wall of rubble.  
"Wha...it's a dead end." She uttered, shaking her head. "Now what do we do?"  
In response, the ruins themselves found an answer. The floor beneath her feet cracked, caved inwards, and began to collapse underneath her. As Ciel uttered out a short cry of panic, Zero's instincts kicked in once again.  
He dashed towards her, swept her up in his arms...and as the floor gave way even quicker underneath his added weight, he held her tight against him, bracing her from the impact as he plummeted down a long abandoned shaft which had perhaps once contained an elevator or lift of sorts. Nearly eighty to a hundred feet later, his feet hit bottom, and his legs bowed out to carry out the impact.  
Ciel, shaking in his arms, opened her eyes and looked up at him. In response, Zero cracked an easy smile and gently set her down on her own feet. "Relax. I said I'd protect you."  
She got her footing back soon enough, and smiled weakly back at him.

"Zero...thank you." She took a few tentative steps forward from the bottom of the shaft into a new hallway. "This place seems to be a prehistoric laboratory. We may be able to find a Trans-Server, which we can use to get back to the resistance base."  
Zero frowned at that. "Trans-Server? What's that?"  
Ciel mentally slapped herself and shook her head. "My apologies...Think of it as a transporter for those who have no internal warp mechanisms. After the Eurasia crisis, they also became the only reliable way to warp...and most importantly, they finally allowed instant transit that was safe for humans."  
Names and ideas rambled by Zero's mind, and he couldn't make sense of them. So he did the only thing he could. "Oh."  
Ciel moved through the hallway, passing by a row of long forgotten consoles, and Zero trotted dutifully behind her. She met another wall of rubble...dead ends seemed to be everywhere in this place.  
"How nice..." She muttered grumblingly. "This passageway's collapsed in. Shall we go back?"  
If Ciel was disappointed, Zero was suddenly on full alert. He could hear something behind that rubble inaudible to Ciel, and it struck a note of fear in him. "Stay back!" He cried out, running towards her with his hand outstretched. Ciel blinked at him in confusion a few times, not sure of what he meant.  
His reasoning became clear when a gigantic metal fist slammed through the rubble that served as a wall and snatched her in its tight grip, pulling her through the gaping opening. Ciel let out another high pitched cry of dismay, and Zero, his instincts taking hold once again, dashed in after her.  
The rubble crumbled behind him, trapping him in the next room. Hovering with little regard for him at the opposite end was an armored mass of metal...and worst of all, it had Ciel in its right hand, held up close to his face.  
"Zero, run!" Ciel cried out. "It's a Golem, you can't stop them!"  
Zero's jaw set firm. He reached a hand behind his back and pulled the Buster Gun back out, running hardened calculations in his head.  
It wasn't going to be easy; Ciel was positioned in such a way that any errant shot would mean certain injury or death to her. Even the beast itself, if it became too overanxious, might harm her indirectly.  
"Zero!!" Ciel screamed at him. "Get out of here! You can't stop it with a Buster!"  
Zero drew himself into his stance and shook his head. "He's not going to get you...I won't let him."

* * *

The battle was furious...The Golem was indeed well protected. Only shots to the head seemed to have any effect, and a minimal one at that. The laser embedded in the back of its throat chased him up the wall before petering out...and potentially more damaging, had he not been as limber as he was, was the hail of rubble from the ceiling the monster's blasts knocked loose. And then it would charge at him.  
Shot after shot sank in...still, the damage was negligible. If Zero hadn't had to worry about being so precise with his fire, then he could have cut loose and overwhelmed the thing's defenses. But...it had Ceil. And so caution was the order of the day.  
It wasn't enough...Exhaustion was beginning to take hold of him. He'd fought quite a lot for being so recently recovered, and his body had yet to fully make amends.  
"It's too late for me, Zero!" Ciel cried towards him, shaking her head. "Escape from this thing...find the Resistance base, you're their only hope!"  
"NO!" Zero cried back, just as harshly. "I'm not leaving you behind!"

And yet...He couldn't defeat it as he was. He knew that. It wasn't enough.  
The room they fought in had apparently been a massive monitoring system at one point. Now the enormous horizontal viewscreen flickered back to life, shining a strange symbol of iridescent rainbow colors. Zero, exhausted and seeing the monster pause as well, noticed it...

But it was when it began to speak that his ears truly did perk up. "What...Huh...?"  
In a beam of shimmering light, an object appeared in midair, flickered to life, and embedded itself in the ground.  
A metallic cylindrical casing. A glowing green beam of pulsing light...contained plasma kept within the confines of an electromagnetic barrier than gifted it with a supreme edge.  
_"Use this...Zero..."_ The voice said, overwhelming but gentle.

It struck a resonant chord in the addled shift of his memories. Familiar...Very familiar to him, and yet he could not place it. Whoever it was, the reaction did not prompt hatred, or rage, or concern...but a gentler sense of familiarity. "W...Who are you?" Zero asked, his voice a forced whisper of disbelief.  
_"Hurry..."_ The voice continued. _"You have to...save her. Don't waste time..."_  
The symbol flickered a few more times, and then vanished, taking the voice with it.  
Zero was left in silence and doubts once again...but standing at his feet was an object which a large portion of him recognized, and was drawn to.  
Plucking it up in his right hand, the Buster Gun put behind his back once again, Zero marveled at the harsh glow and the power within. It had a name...a part of him instinctively knew what it was.  
A beam saber.  
No...  
_Z...Z-Saber..._  
At last, another part of who he was shifted back into place. Gripping it tightly in his right hand, Zero felt a resurgence of power and will rise up in him.  
This weapon was his. And he knew that this was not the first time he'd used it.  
Ciel had been knocked into stunned silence by the entire incident...But as the Golem revved back to life and fired another scathing beam at the floor underneath Zero's feet, the Crimson Warrior lost no time whatsoever.  
Dashing backwards, he scampered up the side of the wall with an agility and grace that made all his former efforts pale. It was poetry in motion, this blade and he...like two pieces of a grander ballet, they could only dance in perfect harmony with each other.  
And with his saber in his hand, Zero felt invincible.  
The beam never touched him. It came up the side of the wall behind him, and never touched. At the peak of his climb, Zero jumped off of the wall in a powerful thruster aided leap, raising his saber high and gripping it with both hands.  
A low and guttural rumble began in his chest...and when it came out, it was a fierce and unending warcry that echoed about the room in a scream that shook Ciel to her very core.  
In a flash of light, and the briefest gash of ozone, half of the Golem's head was cleaved from it in a diagonal fashion. Badly damaged, and beginning to collapse apart, the Golem let go of Ciel, who collapsed to the floor with a not so gentle oomph. Zero's eyes caught the flickering light dancing within the behemoth's shell, widened as he realized what was about to happen. In one deft motion, he dashed towards Ciel, plucked her up in his free hand, and dashed away from the mass of metal, throwing her to the ground and shielding her as the Golem blew apart in fusion fire.  
The smoke and light cleared. The facility grew silent. And Ciel's breathing became more labored, staring up at him in a combination of disbelief and wonder and admiration all.  
Zero looked at her for a long moment. Long enough to realize that she was all right.

And then his eyes wandered back to the glowing green Z-Saber in his hand. His Z-Saber.  
His.  
He had done that.  
"Christ in Heaven..." He whispered in awe, lost in the depths of his blade.  
"You truly are Zero..." Ciel squeaked meekly. "The one and only."  
For the man in red armor with long yellow hair, he knew he was Zero.  
But he no longer knew what that meant.


	3. Epilogue: Relics

_**MEGA MAN ZERO: SHADOWS OF A HUNTER**_

A Novelette by Eric "Erico" Lawson

**Epilogue: Relics**

_April 10th, 2220_

_Neo Arcadia_

_11:15 A.M._

Copy X considered it a normal day; he reviewed the previous day's statistics, established what inefficiencies in water, food, and power consumption existed in the harmonious world and utopia within the walls of his charge, the heavily defended Neo Arcadia. It was a place he had a certain pride in, as he should. Here, wars were not fought. Here, he commanded an unstoppable force. Here, humanity survived beyond the ruins of the last traumatic century.  
All the same, it was not often he slipped out of his martial, militaristic role. Today had been one such rare occurrence, as he had looked at some of the new petitions from the Neo Arcadian citizens for a new park for the younglings. In the peace and quiet of his throne room, as it could only be called, the overseer of Neo Arcadia deliberated long and hard over the qualities of a slide complex or a tire climbing wall.  
And then the entry door chimed. The reploid blinked his red eyes a few times, slowly lowering his datapadd and looking towards the door. It chimed again.  
"Enter." The overseer barked, putting the petitions away for the time being. The hydraulically motivated doors shifted open, allowing a bright green and white figure to stroll into the room, marching with precision step and a disciplined gait. "Aah, Harpuia." The blue reploid said calmly. "What can I do for you today?"  
"I have an update on yesterday's mission." Harpuia began, blinking his stoic, but fiery eyes at the figure from whom he took his orders.  
Copy X blinked at him. "Oh, yes." He mused after a long moment. "So then, Ciel is safely returned to Neo Arcadia?"  
Harpuia looked slightly uncomfortable, shifting his stance. "Well...not exactly, sir."  
Now the blue reploid's otherwise placid demeanor turned cold and hard. "And...perhaps you would be willing to explain to me why not?"  
"The 47th Pantheon Division met with substantial resistance. Ciel was able to make it to a hidden Trans-Server in the ruins and escape backup forces." Harpuia explained cautiously.  
"Aah, perfect." Copy X growled. "And let me guess what's next...she scrambled the Trans-Server destination codes just before transmission, so we still remain dispossessed as to their current whereabouts."  
"We believe that the Resistance lies somewhere outside of Neo Arcadia, in the city ruins." Harpuia said quickly. "However, we do not have a more accurate fix...and so far, their base has escaped the detection of the 29th Pantheon Divison stationed there."  
Copy X seemed to fume for a moment, or as close to fuming as the cold and seemingly soulless entity could get. "We were this close to ending this pointless resistance, you know." the blue reploid explained. He lifted a finger and pointed it at Harpuia. "Seeing as it was your troops that were dispatched to capture Ciel in the first place, the failure rests solely on your shoulders."  
Harpuia's face burned with anger and disappointment, but mostly anger. He lowered his face, if only to keep himself from staring defiantly into the eyes of his commander. "Very well. So what is to be done?"  
"For now, you will continue to search for this resistance base of theirs...other operations will continue as normal. This is a minor setback. An annoyance. We will continue." Copy X replied, picking up his datapadd and waving the Wind Warrior away.  
Fuming at the cold audacity of his commander, Harpuia stood and waited a few moments, looking up at the figure which had been built to replace Master X.  
The duplicate lowered his datapadd enough so his bright red eyes could glare over the top and look down at his subordinate. "Is there something you wish to say, General Harpuia?" Copy X asked warningly.  
Harpuia clicked his heels together and threw a salute. "No, sir." He turned and walked off, glad to be rid of that task. He had better things to do than put up with an aggravating duplicate.  
_Master X would never have approved of you, Copy..._

Once the hydraulic doors had shut behind Harpuia and left Copy X in silence, he put the datapadd down again, then closed his eyes. "All right, Phantom. Come out, I know you're in here."  
In a soft hushed blast of wind, and the briefest flicker of darkness, a figure in tight black and gray appeared, a thick mask covering his eyes. A massive four pointed ninja star was attached to his back, and he folded his arms beside Copy X's throne. "You are getting better." Phantom noted darkly. "Two months ago, you would not have noticed me."  
"Call it intuition." Copy X said, looking at his fourth, most secretive general. Unlike the other three, Harpuia, Fefnir, and Leviathan, Phantom had never fought under the original Mega Man X in the Cyber Elf Wars. Phantom was a product of Copy X's reign in Neo Arcadia...a defense measure against any machinations those three troublesome Generals might throw at him. Phantom was quick, silent, deadly...  
And unquestioningly loyal.  
"All right then, Phantom. Perhaps you could tell me a little more about this failed mission yesterday...seeing as Harpuia is obviously trying to hide something." Copy X folded his arms.  
"There was a team of golems dispatched with the 27th Pantheon unit as well." Phantom stated.  
"Really?" Copy X mused, lifting an eyebrow. "That should have solved any problems in a hurry."  
"It would have, but only one golem was actually able to give pursuit inside the ruins."

"All the same, the Resistance's weapons are incapable of dealing any serious damage to the Golem units. They're the strongest frontline Mechaniloids we have in such remote regions."  
"Yes." Phantom agreed. "But...not strong enough in this case."  
Copy X leaned on an arm, looking to his last general. "Just...What was out there?"  
"Ruins." Phantom explained. "Ruins from the last century...And I have a feeling that Ciel was relic hunting. If such is the case...then she apparently found one."  
Copy X's eyes darkened. "Sigma? The Maverick Virus?"  
Phantom chuckled. "Oh, you do amuse me some days, Master. No. Something...perhaps far worse, I think."  
The blue reploid snorted, shaking his head. "Come now. What could be worse than the resurrection of the great evil that my predecessor spent the better part of the 22nd Century fighting to destroy?"  
Phantom folded his hands together. "I've taken the liberty of transmitting a video file to your mail account."  
Wordlessly, Copy X opened up his mail and found the file. He opened it, blinking as the feed began.  
It wasn't a typical kind of footage. "What is this?" Copy X queried.  
"Something Harpuia didn't want you to see." Phantom noted quietly. "This is the digital memory image of the golem that made it inside of the ruins." The angle changed, and a flash of pink clothing and a beautiful face strewn with tangled blond hair appeared in the mechaniloid's hand. "As you can see, for a moment, Ciel was obtained. However, while the good scientist had had her entire Resistance scouting contingent obliterated by this point..."  
The angle changed, and a flash of red appeared on screen, jumping up the wall like a crazed monkey to avoid the crumbling ceiling blocks created by the golem's destabilization laser.  
"...It seems she was able to find a different kind of help." 

Copy X stared harder at the image on his main overhead viewscreen, leaning in closer and craning his neck.  
It...That figure...  
Red armor...long blond hair...There was something familiar in how he held himself, in that basic design.  
"Ciel became a relic hunter for the day...and she found herself one Hell of a relic." Phantom explained coldly.

Transfixed, Copy X watched as the strange reploid in red armor bounced about the room, sinking shot after weak shot into the golem's weak point, its head. _But no, that's not nearly enough damage to take a golem down..._  
The warrior was weakening. He was realizing how useless his efforts were.  
But then, it all changed.  
As Copy X watched with slowly dawning horror, a strange, but familiar silver and white cylinder spun through the air, gushing bright eldritch green fire from its maw as it embedded itself in the ground in front of the weary red warrior.  
"The old stories...The really old ones, before the Reconstruction, tell that for a long time, Mega Man X did not fight alone in his struggle for peace." Phantom explained. "They say that another walked beside him...just as deadly, just as devastating, perhaps even more so than our great liberator. This second "Maverick Hunter", as they called themselves back then, had bold red armor the color of fresh blood,long flowing blond hair, and piercing green eyes. But even more than that...The one defining characteristic, the legends say, was the cast of his weapon. Often, it was the only part of him his enemies ever saw. A glowing green beam saber."  
Phantom leaned down next to Copy X's ear, his breath tickling the sensors there. "The **Z** Saber."

In the golem's video footage, the red warrior grasped the newfound green beam saber in his hand, jumped up the wall for a bit, then leapt through the air with a bloodcurdling warcry, his weapon held above his head.  
One massive swing later, the video footage suddenly blinked into static and critical error messages before the screen went black.

Copy X, for a moment, felt his cold blood freeze hard in his veins.  
"Ciel had a purpose in those ruins. She found the second Hero of the Maverick Wars...The Crimson Hunter."

_Zero..._

For the first time that day, Copy X rose to his feet. He looked at Phantom, his bright red eyes dancing with something that the fourth general had not ever seen on his commander's face before.  
Fear.

"Harpuia's mistakes have complicated everything." Copy X began slowly, looking about.  
The walls of Neo Arcadia didn't feel as safe as they had ten minutes before.

**END**


End file.
